


the lamb

by Ryah_Ignis



Series: Season 15 Codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x01 coda, Everyone Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-20 22:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21064346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: “How?”The way Cas’s voice cracks on the word makes it clear that it isn’t a challenge, but a real question.  How is he supposed to look at that thing, that abomination, and not see his child?  How is he supposed to let a being of darkness make a mockery out of Jack’s light?He doesn’t want to let it, but his lip trembles a little bit.  Dean must notice, because his face softens just enough for Cas to see."Or, the one where no one copes very well.





	the lamb

They can’t exactly leave the edge of the town. If Belphegor wasn’t telling the truth--and, honestly, Sam has had enough with blindly trusting demons for a lifetime--then they need to be ready. So instead of renting a motel room the next town over or spending the night sequestered in the high school with the evacuees, they end up parking the Impala on the empty highway. 

“I’ll take the first watch,” Dean says the moment he puts the car in park.

As he reaches for the buckle on his seatbelt, Sam glances in the rearview mirror just in time to see Cas roll his eyes. He flops back against his seat without unbuckling himself. When the two of them are in a mood like this, no one is going to go anywhere anytime soon.

“I don’t sleep,” Cas reminds him, as if there’s some way that Dean has forgotten that. “I can watch.”

But the fireworks Sam is waiting for never come. Instead, Dean storms out of the car, slamming the door so hard behind him that the entire car rattles. Belphegor raises his eyebrows, and it’s such an unfamiliar look on Jack’s face that Sam’s stomach rolls.

“Lovers’ spat?”

Cas snarls something under his breath that Sam can’t quite make out before he follows Dean out into the dark. Sam lets him get a few yards away before he unbuckles himself and stretches out along the front seat. It’s not exactly a comfortable position, but Sam’s heart hasn’t been beating this slowly in twenty-four hours. That’s good enough for now.

The bullet hole in his shoulder burns as he shifts his arm to a better angle. Sam lets out a small hiss of breath between his teeth, but he doesn’t give any other indication that he’s in pain. Belphegor probably doesn’t care, but he might tell Dean if he thinks it’ll add to the chaos. Which it probably would.

“You know,” Belphegor says, just as Sam closes his eyes “Beelzebub owes me about forty souls.”

Sam doesn’t dignify that with a response, but apparently Belphegor doesn’t need one to keep on talking.

“When I saw that angel grab hold of your brother--I was there, you know, front seat--I turned to him and said that everything was going to change. And then we would hear these stories, down in Hell. You know, the big stuff, like Purgatory. I bet him forty souls that there was something going on with those two.”

Sam tugs his coat off, letting out a small noise when he brushes the wound again, balls it up, and presses it over his ear while he mashes the other into the leather seat. Usually, demons don’t seem to understand subtlety, but Belphagor must get the point, because he shuts up.

But Sam’s brain doesn’t.

The thing he told Dean about escaping the rat race--yeah. He’s trying to internalize that himself, trying to convince himself that Chuck is gone and that they have a chance to finally get out of all of this. But he can’t shake the thought of what it all means.

When he decided to take the leap into the Pit, had Chuck been waiting in the wings? Had he been trying to decide if he wanted to step in, to deliver him like Isaac? And then, what had made him stop and let Sam fall?

He swallows hard and tightens his grip on the coat. Sleep doesn’t come for a long, long time.

* * *

“I thought I told you I’d take first watch,” Dean snaps.

Cas looks pointedly at the days-old warm beer in his hand, taken from the trusty green cooler in the back of the Impala when no one was looking. It doesn’t seem much like taking first watch to him.

Dean stares him down, daring him to say something as he takes a long swig. For the first time, Cas sincerely wishes that he could drown his exhaustion the same way. But since he can’t, he takes the dare.

“How can you even look at him?”

Dean throws up his arms, sloshing a little bit of his drink on to his palm. He wipes it away on the canvas of his jacket, FBI logo be damned. 

“What the hell was I supposed to do, Cas? Let us get eaten by zombies? Starve to death in a crypt?” 

“He’s our  _ son _ ! Would you have let a demon possess your mother’s corpse?”

For a moment, Cas thinks he’s gone a bit too far. The pain of losing Mary is still fresh for him--he can only imagine what Dean is feeling right now. 

“Yes,” Dean says cooly, his face shuttering. “To save Sammy? You? Yeah, I would.”

He takes another swig, emptying the bottle. Dean tosses it away into the underbrush; Cas makes a mental note to pick it up later. An animal nosing around down there could cut itself on the broken glass.

“How?” 

The way Cas’s voice cracks on the word makes it clear that it isn’t a challenge, but a real question. How is he supposed to look at that  _ thing _ , that  _ abomination _ , and not see his child? How is he supposed to let a being of darkness make a mockery out of Jack’s light?

He doesn’t want to let it, but his lip trembles a little bit. Dean must notice, because his face softens just enough for Cas to see.

“You do it because you have to,” Dean says softly.

There are a million things that Cas wants to say. No parent should outlive their child, for one. He’s made uneasy peace with the fact that the Winchesters will leave him one day, but he’d believed that Jack would be present until his end right until the moment Chuck burnt him from the inside out. But he can’t find the words.

“Were you going to shoot him?” 

The ones that come out instead aren’t exactly the ones he wanted. Dean lets out a short huff, and his eyes dart to the side as if searching for the answer written in the air somewhere to Cas’s left.

“I wanted to. I wanted to so bad, Cas. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

Cas feels the weight of it--the true, awful, horrible weight of Jack’s  _ goneness-- _ settle into his bones. He’s not coming back this time, because Chuck has been pulling the strings all along and if he wanted Abraham and Isaac, he would have handed them a lamb.

“I miss him,” he chokes out.

And then Dean is moving, hauling him into a hug that, if he were human, might just have smashed his ribcage. Cas leans into it, letting out a shuddering breath that eases the pain in his chest just a little.

“We get through this, and I kill that son of a bitch Belphegor myself, all right?” Dean says as he pulls back.

Cas gives him a watery smile. “If you hold him,  _ I’ll _ do it.”

Dean smiles then, just a flash before it’s gone, and Cas can’t help but feel like things might just end up all right.

**Author's Note:**

> me, showing up late to the first coda of the season with Starbucks? shocker.
> 
> I hope you all liked it! Cheers to my last twenty codas :D


End file.
